Forty-six years ago this week, on Sunday, October 26, 1980, the St. Louis Cardinals put Bert Jones on the ground 12 times at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. No NFL quarterback had ever been sacked that often in one game, and none has been sacked more since. The Cardinals left town with a 17-10 victory in front of 33,506 fans.
The upset said as much about the two teams as about one afternoon. St. Louis arrived at 2-5 and fresh off a 23-0 shutout loss in Washington. Baltimore was 4-3 and had a former league MVP under center. By the final gun the Cardinals had held the Colts to 225 total yards and 48 on the ground, and both clubs stood at the midpoint of seasons that would end without a playoff berth.
Twelve sacks, 73 yards
Jones dropped back 55 times. On 43 of them he got a pass away, completing 19 for 250 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions. On the other 12 he went down behind the line, and those plays cost Baltimore 73 yards. His net passing total shrank to 177, and the Colts averaged just 3.2 yards per dropback.
The old mark had been 11, shared by several passers. One of them was Greg Landry, who had absorbed 11 sacks against Dallas while playing for Detroit in October 1975. By 1980 Landry was the man holding a clipboard behind Jones in Baltimore, so he watched his share of the record disappear from the Colts’ own sideline.
Sacks did not become an official individual statistic until 1982, so the league’s books do not split those 12 takedowns among the St. Louis defenders. The team totals are what survive, and they are lopsided: the Cardinals lost only 19 yards on two sacks of Jim Hart all day.
How the game was won
St. Louis did its scoring early and then leaned on its defense. Ottis Anderson opened the day with a 4-yard touchdown run in the first quarter. In the third, Hart found Pat Tilley from 10 yards out, and Neil O’Donoghue added a 30-yard field goal for a 17-0 lead.
Baltimore did not score until the fourth quarter. Steve Mike-Mayer hit from 35 yards, and Jones later connected with Roger Carr on a 9-yard touchdown pass to make it 17-10. Carr finished with nine catches for 120 yards, but the comeback stalled there. Eric Williams and Ken Stone each intercepted Jones.
Hart was efficient rather than spectacular, going 18 of 32 for 190 yards with a touchdown and an interception. Mel Gray caught seven of those passes for 101 yards. Anderson ran 20 times for 51 yards and added four receptions for 48 more.
A record that has only been matched
Two quarterbacks have since equaled the dozen. Houston’s Warren Moon took 12 sacks in 1985, and on Sunday night, September 30, 2007, the New York Giants dropped Philadelphia’s Donovan McNabb 12 times in a 16-3 win, with Osi Umenyiora collecting six of them. Nobody has reached 13.
For Jones, the day is an odd footnote on a fine career. He was the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1976, started for the Colts through 1981, and was traded to the Los Angeles Rams on the opening day of the 1982 draft. A neck injury ended his playing days after four games that fall. The Cardinals, coached by Jim Hanifan, finished 5-11; Mike McCormack’s Colts went 7-9.
Pressure on the passer still shapes games today, and so do the flags it draws. Our guides to roughing the passer and intentional grounding explain the rules a quarterback lives under when the pocket collapses.
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